Reports from Burundi say more than five-hundred people have been arrested in a security operation against illegal immigrants and rebels.

The arrests took place at the central market in Bujumbura earlier today Wednesday.

The security forces were reportedly looking for illegal immigrants from Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and for Burundian rebels from the majority Hutu population, who have been waging an escalating campaign of violence since 1993 when Tutsi paratroopers assassinated the country's first democratically-elected president.